Designing with Love

Slides are the artifact everyone recognizes, and that’s exactly why the myth survives: if a stakeholder can only see the deck, they assume the work is decoration. Jackie closes out the Myths in Instructional Design and Education series by pushing back on “instructional design is just making slides” and naming what professional instructional designers actually do long before anyone picks a template. We walk through the hidden core of learning experience design: needs analysis, clarifying learnin

Class size is not a harmless detail; it’s a force that quietly rewrites the learning experience. When a course jumps from 15 learners to 75, the same discussion prompt can turn into noise, feedback timelines can stretch, and learners can feel invisible even when the content is strong. In this episode, Jackie is tackling a stubborn myth in instructional design and education: “Class size doesn’t affect learning quality.” She breaks down why this belief sticks around, including how class size is f

Interactivity is one of those words that sounds obvious until you try to design for it. If you’ve ever felt pressure to add branching scenarios, animations, or expensive eLearning interactions to prove a course is “engaging,” we’re calling that myth out directly: interactivity does not require fancy tools. In this episode, Jackie walks you through why this belief has lasted in instructional design and education, especially when stakeholders equate visual polish with learning value. We unpack th

AI can generate a course outline, a script, and a quiz in seconds, so it’s easy to wonder if instructional designers are next on the replacement list. We slow that fear down and look at what’s actually happening when AI enters the learning design workflow, and why “fast content” is not the same thing as effective instruction. We unpack the myth “AI will replace instructional designers” and name the reason it sticks: AI outputs are visible, while the real work of instructional design often isn’t